SLIFF 2016 Interview – SEARCHING FOR HOME Producer Rita Marika Csapo-Sweet

Interview conducted by Cate Marquis

“Searching for Home and Identity” is a free program with this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival, which includes documentary feature SEARCHING FOR HOME and documentary shorts ALL THAT REMAINS and STAIRWAY. The free event takes place Saturday, Nov. 12, 6:30pm at University of Missouri-St. Louis’  Gallery 210, and was also presented Saturday, Nov. 5, 6pm at UMSL’s Gallery 210. The program will be introduced by producer Dr. Rita Marika Csapo-Sweet.

Dr. Rita Marika Csapo-Sweet, associate professor of Media Studies at University of Missouri- St. Louis, has built a bond with Bosnian Muslim students over the years of teaching film, students who had lost their homes during the 1990s war and genocide.

Loss of home joined both professor and student in 2013. Csapo-Sweet’s beloved historic Dogtown home was destroyed by fire and that loss was followed a few months later by another tragedy,  the sudden death of her beloved husband, Dr. Fredrick Sweet, a Washington University professor.

ALL THAT REMAINS is a documentary short about Csapo-Sweet as she revisits her destroyed home and her year of loss, something she describes as a “house tour from hell.” The film is part of the SLIFF program “The Search for Home and Identity,” which Csapo-Sweet curated and includes the feature documentary SEARCHING FOR HOME and another documentary short STAIRWAY. Hari Secic, a former film student of  Csapo-Sweet through an exchange program with the University of Sarajevo, directs both the feature and the short about Csapo-Sweet’s home.  STAIRWAY the other documentary short is directed by Miroslav Mandic, another of her Bosnian students. Csapo-Sweet, who was producer on the films, will speak at the screening.

“All the films in this side-bar “Searching for Home and Identity” deal with post-war trauma; and coping with life in the face of almost insurmountable tragedy,” Csapo-Sweet said. “While many of the films are directed by or about events in Bosnia and Herzegovina, other films deal with disruption after trauma. These themes are universal and timeless.”

Csapo-Sweet describes “All That Remains” as a “house tour from Hell,” taking the viewer through the burnt shell while discussing her experience. The unique house had been built from materials from the 1904 World Fair, and its imposing white stone exterior made it a distinctive structure in the area. Along with her husband Fred, Csapo-Sweet had built a connection between the Jewish community and the Bosnian Muslims over the shared experience of genocide. Fred Sweet, who was Jewish, was working on a book about the role of medical doctor’s in genocide, a big part of which was about Dr. Carl Clauberg, who worked along-side Mengele in Auschwitz. “Fred received a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in Bosnia on that same subject in 2010. But he died before he could finish his research, so it’s up to me now,” Csapo-Sweet said.

“I mention during the interview [in ALL THAT REMAINS] a number of times that although our house-fire was a tragedy, our neighbors saved our lives by getting us out of the house in time,” she said. “How different that was, than what happened to the Bosnians (and Jews) where the neighbors were trying to kill them. We lost everything in the fire, and my husband died 4 months later.  But, what we went through palled by comparison.”

Hari Secic’s documentary “SEARCHING FOR HOME” focuses on Sead, a Bosnian Muslim survivor of the genocide at Sreberenica. Sead had moved to the U.S. as a refugee but after building a life in America, with a wife and kids, but he chose to move back to his childhood village, while his  family chose to remained in America. Director Secic had a short film in SLIFF in 2014 but this is his first feature.

“Many have characterized events in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as the worst genocide in Europe since the Holocaust,” Csapo-Sweet said. “The [St. Louis] Holocaust Museum and Learning Center has worked for years with the Bosnian community in St. Louis, and UMSL.”